Ukraine's Penitentiary Service says Timoshenko's health satisfactory

Timoshenko got a comprehensive checkup, including a blood test

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KIEV, January 11 (Itar-Tass) — Health status of Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, the leader of the oppositionist Batkivshchina /Fatherland/ party who is currently serving a jail term, is satisfactory, the head of the Ukrainian State Penitentiary Service, Alexander Lisitskov told the national parliament Wednesday.

Tuesday, Timoshenko’s closest political associate Alexander Turchinov said Timoshenko, who is serving her term in a corrective prison in the northeast city of Kharkov, passed out and remained unconscious for two hours January 6 after taking pills the physicians had administered to her.

Lisitskov said Timoshenko got a comprehensive checkup, including a blood test. The medics confirmed that her health had a satisfactory status and she needed fitness sessions.

Opposition factions in the Verkhovna Rada, the national parliament, proposed to set up a parliamentary commission for clarifying the circumstances of the January 6 incident involving the former Prime Minister, and speaker Vladimir Litvin asked them to draft a resolution on the commission and to put it up for a debate in parliament.

The MPs also asked the Penitentiary Service to provide CCTV footage from the ward where Timoshenko has been placed to together with another female convict.

Lisitskov answered that this is impossible to do. “The video archive is not kept or stored although video surveillance continues round the clock for preventing unscheduled situations,” Lisitskov said.

The Ukrainian political opposition’s opinion is that “Lisitskov’s answers testify to the reluctance of the Penitentiary Service officials to have Timoshenko and her cellmate provide any explanations for the incident.”